In the present, Danh-Gem's former allies are organizing in the shadows, magic is growing in power and magical creatures are reappearing, and the Chosen One has been found and must be trained before everyone runs out of time.

Cosmic Chess Game: In Manticore's Secret, it turns out that the big war and the Second Age of Terror everyone's been worrying about? A trifling concern compared to how much the Jerkass Gods are planning to screw the world for their own amusement. By Unwaba Revelations some of the characters have actually figured this out and are working on the problem.

Delivery Stork: Pashan eggs are delivered to safe nests by storks after their laid, but their conceived the normal way.

Fantastic Racism: Every species and culture feels this about most everyone else. It's one of the major plot points and themes throughout. The asurs and vanars definitely get the short end of the stick though, and the ravians and the rakshas really didn't get along.

Genre Savvy: Many of the characters; Danh-Gem, Kirin, Maya, the Silver Dagger, and the Civilian deserving special mention.

Hero Academy: The Hero School used to train adventurers and knights, now it trains politicians and accountants (aka, the people who actually run the world nowadays). Enki Univeristy is a more straight example of a Wizarding School.

The Hero's Journey: Asvin has a very standard, archetypal ones hitting all the bullet points along the way... up until he finally gets in a position to fight the Big Bad.

Humans Are White: Averted. Most of the characters are some shade of brown, but there is quite a spectrum and clear ethnic divides between countries, from the very dark Durgans to the Nordic blondes of Skuanmark.

Hybrid Monster: Kirin. Neither part is human either. Also, all human spell-binders are actually Half-Human Hybrid hybrids with some rakshas blood somewhere in their family trees.

Our Elves Are Better: Ravians have much stronger magic than humans, including mind-control powers that make everyone think really well of them. Most of them are intolerant, authoritarian jerks and their reappearance in book 2 is not a turn for the better.

Shout-Out: Full of them. The books are constantly referencing, if not quoting, from anywhere and everywhere. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, the Odyssey, Robin Hood...

Theory of Narrative Causality: This is an actual force in the story, doing things like pushing Asvin and Maya together because the Hero Always Gets the Girl. The tongue-in-cheek Genre Savvy of the narrative voice just puts this all on the surface.

The Anthropic Principle is a subset of this. Asvin's most common epitaph is: "The Chosen One. A Person to Whom Things Happen. Many Things."

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